“I never treated Ristofalo so,” replied Richling, with a smile tinged with bitterness. It was against himself that he felt bitter; but the Doctor took it differently, and Richling, seeing this, hurried to correct the impression.
“I mean I lent him no such amount as that.”
“It was just one-fiftieth of that,” said Mary.
“But you gave liberally, without upbraiding,” said the Doctor.
“Oh, no, Doctor! no!” exclaimed she, lifting the hand that lay on her husband’s near shoulder and reaching it over to the farther one. “Oh! a thousand times no! John never meant that. Did you, John?”
“How could I?” said John. “No!” Yet there was confession in his look. He had not meant it, but he had felt it.
Dr. Sevier sat down, motioned them into their seats, drew the arm-chair close to theirs. Then he spoke. He spoke long, and as he had not spoken anywhere but at the bedside scarce ever in his life before. The young husband and wife forgot that he had ever said a grating word. A soft love-warmth began to fill them through and through. They seemed to listen to the gentle voice of an older and wiser brother. A hand of Mary sank unconsciously upon a hand of John. They smiled and assented, and smiled, and assented, and Mary’s eyes brimmed up with tears, and John could hardly keep his down. The Doctor made the whole case so plain and his propositions so irresistibly logical that the pair looked from his eyes to each other’s and laughed. “Cozumel!” They did not utter the name; they only thought of it both at one moment. It never passed their lips again. Their visitor brought them to an arrangement. The fifty dollars were to be placed to John’s credit on the books kept by Narcisse, as a deposit from Richling, and to be drawn against by him in such littles as necessity might demand. It was to be “secured”—they all three smiled at that word—by Richling’s note payable on demand. The Doctor left a prescription for the refractory chills.
As he crossed Canal street, walking in slow meditation homeward at the hour of dusk, a tall man standing against a wall, tin cup in hand,—a full-fledged mendicant of the steam-boiler explosion, tin-proclamation type,—asked his alms. He passed by, but faltered, stopped, let his hand down into his pocket, and looked around to see if his pernicious example was observed. None saw him. He felt—he saw himself—a drivelling sentimentalist. But weak, and dazed, sore wounded of the archers, he turned and dropped a dime into the beggar’s cup.
Richling was too restless with the joy of relief to sit or stand. He trumped up an errand around the corner, and hardly got back before he contrived another. He went out to the bakery for some crackers—fresh baked—for Mary; listened to a long story across the baker’s counter, and when he got back to his door found he had left the crackers at the bakery. He went back for them and returned, the blood about his heart still running and leaping and praising God.
“The sun at midnight!” he exclaimed, knitting Mary’s hands in his. “You’re very tired. Go to bed. Me? I can’t yet. I’m too restless.”